Routines, capabilities and the growth of the firm: Messrs. Ross & Glendining, Dunedin, 1862–1900

Evolutionary economists have suggested that the technical and organisational routines of individual firms play a similar role to genes in biological organisms. Unlike biological organisms, however, firms are supposedly able to engage in purposive adaptation and select out those routines that best enable them to adapt and grow in a changing environment. This thesis is tested by examining the way in which routines assisted the growth of a leading New Zealand enterprise. It concludes that while routines were helpful in enabling the enterprise to expand its core business, they were of little assistance when the management wished to diversify into new and dissimilar activities.     

The jump‐start of the Holland economy during the late‐medieval crisis,c.1350–c.15001

By c.1500 the Holland economy had already acquired modern traits, as witnessed by the occupational structure and the urbanization rate. This article tries to explain the remarkable development of the Holland economy between 1350 and 1500, linking it to the specific occupation history of the region in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The combination of high wages in this frontier economy with increasing difficulties in arable agriculture as a result of the subsidence of peat soils, and the absence of feudal restrictions in production and marketing, resulted in the rise of capital‐intensive industries, benefiting from converging wages and increasing market integration.